She broke around him—a relentless, rolling flood that took her apart and put her back together with the edges smoothed down. She held on, nails biting his shoulders, gaze locked with his and rode until her muscles trembled and her breath wouldn’t come in even pulls.
She sagged forward, forehead near his, sweat slicking their skin where they touched. He was still thick inside her, still straining. She found the last of her rhythm and kept going, slower now, a steady grind that dragged him after her. She felt his rhythm shudder and then spill. She absorbed it all and she stayed still until the tension bled out of him, leaving them a tangled mess against the old quilt.
The fan ticked. Her heartbeat climbed down out of her throat and took up residence in her chest again. When she finally eased off him, the realization of how much she cared about this man hit her like a round she hadn't seen fired. She wasn’t sure she’d ever cared this much. Wasn’t sure she’d even wanted to.
But here she was, falling for a man who was falling apart at the seams.
Silence settled, not awkward, just thick. Her skin cooled in tiny patches where the air hit sweat.
Trent tugged the quilt up enough to cover her hips. His fingers brushed her thigh in the process, a casual stroke that tightened something low in her belly in a softer, slower way. She closed her eyes and let herself float for a minute, the sound of the swamp folding in at the edges of consciousness like a lullaby sung by something with too many teeth.
Tomorrow would come whether she invited it or not. She turned her face into the warm curve of Trent’s shoulder and breathed him in—cedar soap mixed with salty air, sunshine, and sawgrass.
“You okay?” he asked, quiet, the words a puff against her hair.
She nodded against him, the movement small. “You even have to ask.”
He reached down, laced their fingers under the quilt like he’d done it a hundred times, and held on.
Outside, something splashed again. The gators went silent. She wasn’t sure if that was more terrifying than the bellowing. She felt sleep pull at her like a tide she refused to fight. Not tonight. Not here, with his hand warm in hers.
Later, there'd be time for the hard conversations and harder choices. But for now, she'd enjoy this She'd enjoy him.
She closed her eyes, and the darkness came easy.
Chapter Six
Dove blinked open her eyes, and four things registered immediately.
The gators were making noise. Lots of it.
She was alone in Trent’s bed.
It was still dark.
And no coffee had been made.
She lay still for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the pre-dawn darkness. She turned, and the clock on the nightstand indicated it was only five in the freaking morning. God, why did everyone in this damn town wake so fucking early? She thought when she’d left the Army, her days of having to be out of bed at the butt-ugly hours of the morning were over. But it was like Calusa Cove lit up at four-thirty in the morning just because it could.
She pressed her palm against the sheets where Trent had been. She suspected he’d been up for a bit because he didn’t sleep well. Most of that had been because of his mother. But he mentioned he'd always been an early riser and a morning person.
Dove tossed the covers to the side, snagged a pair of Trent’s boxers, found her tank top, and padded to the window. She could see him at the edge of the moat, bucket in hand, tossing chicken quarters to the gators who'd made this their permanent home like it was any other morning. Like the world hadn't tilted sideways every day since his mother had died.
Dove watched as one of the small gators eased closer, practically taking the food right from Trent’s hands. She shivered. It was amazing that the prehistoric monsters hadn’t eaten the man. Or that a python hadn’t strangled him. Or that a rattler hadn’t bitten him. Oh wait. He had been attacked by a few rattlesnakes and had the bite marks on his leg to prove it.
Falling for this man was not a good idea. It was worse than falling for a man in the Special Forces.
She continued to stare at him as he fed his precious gators. He moved with an ease she envied—comfortable in his skin, comfortable on this land, comfortable with creatures that made her want to climb the nearest tree. There was something almost meditative about the way he worked his way around the water's edge, each toss precise, each gator accounted for.
The big one—Dolly—kept surfacing near a spot closer to the bank. Nudging at the water.
Maybe she was looking for Bonnie, who had probably gotten eaten by the other gators because Trent once told her that was a thing.
Dove's chest tightened.
She'd seen a lot of death in her life. Soldiers. Civilians. Targets through a scope who stopped being people the moment her finger touched the trigger. She'd learned to compartmentalize, to pack the grief and guilt into boxes and shove them into corners of her mind where they wouldn't interfere with the mission. It had only taken one bad mission to blow every one of those boxes wide open.
Growing up, she’d been a tough cookie. And the Army had hardened her even more. Her parents tried to understand her, and her father, having been military, did get the importance of separating the job from the person. However, the second that last mission blew up—literally—it nearly destroyed what little humanity she’d had left, and it was difficult for her to face her folks.
